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Friday, January 6, 2012

Compost/Chickens

Lost my favourite hen this morning. I noticed #3 seemed slightly out of sorts last night (although I couldn't put a finger on what was wrong with her) and her comb had flopped over. Didn't seem like a big deal, but I found her dead on her roost this morning. Very disappointing, I have no idea what happened to her.

I also noticed one of the turkeys has a nice slice around his tail, probably from big-bruiser rooster. So we're getting our butts in gear about sectioning off part of the coop (although that means hanging an extra heat light), then I can put our little chickies (who are still in my house) back in the coop.

The only upside is that the compost is working well. We had one of our sickly red-stars die late last week, and I was able to dig a nice big hole for her in the compost. I only got about 2' this morning as I went for the other side of the compost which isn't as high. Composting carcasses is a good way to dispose of dead poultry. You don't want to do it when you suspect a communicable disease, which might survive in the compost & spread back on the field.

The OMFRA has some great pdfs on how to compost deadstock. Either good or bad, you can get full skeletons back out of compost if you leave the deadstock in for a specific amount of time. I have heard many stories about people composting horses to preserve the skeletons.

(Blog note: sorry this was supposed to go out yesterday, someone got distracted and didn't press send, so it is actually Saturday today)